Is Dominance Really A Thing? Cesar Millan, Libertarianism + A Dog Named Pizza

Before she became a dog trainer, Annie assumed that understanding dogs' supposed obsession with dominance was an important part of being a good trainer. She pushed her 18-pound Yorkiepoo into alpha rolls so he'd know she was boss. She yelled in his face, and made sure he never entered through a doorway before her, because Cesar Millan said that that would make the dog think he was the one in charge. The whole idea that dog behavior, and the way dogs learn, had anything to do with science simply did not compute; the notion of them existing in a kind of Lord-Of-The-Flies quest for supreme power seemed plausible and not something worth reconsidering. After graduating dog training school, her thoughts on "dominance" shifted 180 degrees. Now, ten years spent working as a professional trainer, they've shifted yet again... Bonus Q+A: Pizza the mini goldendoodle (@the_pizza_dood) is obsessed with stealing collapsible water bowls at the park. Annie suggests a three pronged approach to curing him of the habit of destroying silicone water bowls that belong to other dogs. Products mentioned in this episode: The Zisc Flying Disc by West Paw https://storeforthedogs.com/products/zisc-flying-disc West Paw Toys https://storeforthedogs.com/collections/west-paw-designs Collapsible Slow Food Bowl https://storeforthedogs.com/products/collapsible-slow-food-bowl Learn more about Parvene Farhoudy http://behaviormatters.com/about-parvene-farhoody/ Books by Raymond Coppinger Dogs (with Lorna Coppinger) https://amzn.to/2UuJUzA What Is A Dog (with Lorna Coppinger) https://amzn.to/30mDhTZ How Dogs Work (with Mark Feinstein) https://amzn.to/32qcXuV The (now embarrassing) 2007 article Annie wrote in The NY Times about people wanting to become dog trainers: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/fashion/27DOGS.html --- Partial Transcript: Annie: Hello, human friends, and dog listeners, woof to you. I wanted to talk today about dominance. So in the three decades of life that I lived before becoming a dog trainer, I am pretty sure that I thought the word dominant was as much a part of dog training as boiling water was to cooking. It was just an essential part of the whole thing that was dog training. Dog training at that time being something that I think I thought of as, you know, something that happens when you sign up for a class or you hire a professional, and that dog training wasn't happening really outside of those times... Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/ Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe